alejoe91 / klustakwik2

Fast software for high-dimensional cluster analysis using the masked EM algorithm for Gaussians mixtures

Alessio Buccino

Hi everyone!

I am an engineer and software developer focused on methods and analysis tools for neuroscience research, especially for extracellular electrophysiology. I am passionate about science, software, and engineering, and my mission is to support neuroscientists and facilitate their research efforts by providing state-of-the-art analysis methods and software tools. Among these, I am the core developer of several open-source scientific tools, including SpikeInterface, a widely used software framework to unify and simplify the analysis of extracellular electrophysiology data.

In March 2022, I joined the Allen Institute for Neural Dynamics team as an electrophysiology pipeline development engineer consultant, with the goal of building open-source and computationally efficient processing pipelines to analyze large amounts of electrophysiological data. Since July 2020, I have been working part-time at CatalystNeuro, a consulting company with the mission of facilitating collaborations in neuroscience and standardizing data analysis and data storage solutions.

Previously, I was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Bio Engineering Lab at ETH, working on multimodal approaches to probe neural activity and to construct detailed biophysical models. Before that I was at the Center for Integrated Neuroplasticity CINPLA, at the University of Oslo, where I received my PhD.

Software and Projects

• SpikeInterface: unified and open-source Python framework for spike sorting. Features include loading/saving in several file format, pre-, post-processing, running 10+ different spike sorters, validation (quality metrics - QC), export to Phy, automatic curation based on QC, comparison between sorting outputs, and visualization widgets.

• ProbeInterface: unified and open-source Python framework for handling neural probes.

• MEArec: Python-based simulator of extracellular spiking activity for spike sorting development and validation. Features include: replication of bursting, control of spatio-temporal collisions, slow and fast drifts, several noise models. Fully interfaced with SpikeInterface.

Other resources

• Google scholar
• Personal website